IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v243y2024ics0165176524004282.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Anchoring of political attitudes

Author

Listed:
  • Broscious, Courtney
  • Halladay, Brianna
  • Landsman, Rachel

Abstract

This paper studies the malleability of individuals’ political attitudes to simple anchors. Using an online survey experiment, we provide participants with the policy preference of one anonymous previous survey respondent. We exogenously vary whether participants are shown a Republican-aligned or Democrat-aligned response. We demonstrate that anchoring has a significant effect on an individual’s stated political attitudes even with this minimal anchor. Our results support the susceptibility of individuals to be easily persuaded through strategic anchoring.

Suggested Citation

  • Broscious, Courtney & Halladay, Brianna & Landsman, Rachel, 2024. "Anchoring of political attitudes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:243:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524004282
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111944
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176524004282
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111944?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dan Ariely & George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 2003. ""Coherent Arbitrariness": Stable Demand Curves Without Stable Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 73-106.
    2. Neeraja Gupta & Luca Rigotti & Alistair Wilson, 2021. "The Experimenters' Dilemma: Inferential Preferences over Populations," Papers 2107.05064, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    3. Furnham, Adrian & Boo, Hua Chu, 2011. "A literature review of the anchoring effect," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 35-42, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alistair Munro & Marieta Valente, 2016. "Green Goods: Are They Good or Bad News for the Environment? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment on Impure Public Goods," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(2), pages 317-335, October.
    2. Jetter, Michael & Walker, Jay K., 2017. "Anchoring in financial decision-making: Evidence from Jeopardy!," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 164-176.
    3. Davood Bayat & Hadi Mohamadpour & Huihua Fang & Pengfei Xu & Frank Krueger, 2023. "The Impact of Order Effects on the Framing of Trust and Reciprocity Behaviors," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-14, February.
    4. Catherine Roux & Christian Thöni, 2015. "Do control questions influence behavior in experiments?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 185-194, June.
    5. Dean Gatzlaff & Peng Liu, 2013. "List Price Information in the Negotiation of Commercial Real Estate Transactions: Is Silence Golden?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 760-786, November.
    6. Mustafa Disli & Koen Inghelbrecht & Koen Schoors & Hannes Stieperaere, 2019. "Stock Price Anchoring," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 19/966, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    7. Lorko, Matej & Servátka, Maroš & Zhang, Le, 2019. "Anchoring in project duration estimation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 49-65.
    8. Ortiz, Jose M. & Teixeira, Lucas I. & Falcão, Natália N.L. & Soki, Erika A. & Almeida, Raquel M., 2024. "Information simplification and default choices improve financial decisions: A credit card statement experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    9. Markus Spiwoks & Zulia Gubaydullina, 2020. "The Magic of Figures: Anchoring and Interferences," Journal of Finance and Investment Analysis, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 9(3), pages 1-2.
    10. Jonathan E. Alevy & Craig E. Landry & John A. List, 2015. "Field Experiments On The Anchoring Of Economic Valuations," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(3), pages 1522-1538, July.
    11. Rafiq Friperson & Hessel Oosterbeek & Bas van der Klaauw, 2023. "Competition modulates buyers’ reaction to sellers’ cheap talk," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-035/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Meub, Lukas & Proeger, Till, 2014. "Are groups 'less behavioral'? The case of anchoring," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 188, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    13. Magdalena Brzozowicz & Michał Krawczyk & Przemysław Kusztelak, 2017. "Do anchors hold for real? Anchoring effect and hypothetical bias in declared WTP," Working Papers 2017-24, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    14. Gergaud, Olivier & Plantinga, Andrew J. & Ringeval-Deluze, Aurelie, 2015. "Anchoring and Property Prices: The Influence of Echelle Des Crus Ratings on Land Sales in the Champagne Region of France," Working Papers 231136, American Association of Wine Economists.
    15. de Haan, Thomas & van Veldhuizen, Roel, 2015. "Willpower depletion and framing effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 47-61.
    16. Pablo Brañas-Garza; Riccardo Ciacci; Ericka Rascón Ramírez, 2020. "Order Matters: Eliciting Maternal Beliefs on Educational Choices," Economics Working Papers ECO 2020/01, European University Institute.
    17. Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa, 2020. "Behavioral economic phenomena in decision-making for others," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    18. O'Garra, Tanya & Sisco, Matthew R., 2018. "Redistribution and Social Information (ReSoc)," SocArXiv 28xwv, Center for Open Science.
    19. Glenk, Klaus & Meyerhoff, Jürgen & Akaichi, Faical & Martin-Ortega, Julia, 2019. "Revisiting cost vector effects in discrete choice experiments," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 135-155.
    20. Francesca Gioia, 2017. "Peer effects on risk behaviour: the importance of group identity," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 100-129, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic experiments; Anchoring; Political attitudes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:243:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524004282. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.